1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a smart card (SC) or an integrated circuit (IC) card which may be based on a standard such as Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) or the like or has compatibility with those standards; and more particularly relates to a mobile communications terminal that may accommodate the IC card.
2. Background of the Invention
An integrated circuit (IC) card has an embedded integrated circuit (IC) that may be a logic circuit and be typically coupled to physical interfaces that which allow the IC card to communicate with hosts or external devices to perform various functions. The external devices may include a mobile communications terminal, a personal computer, an IC card adapter-writer/reader, a digital camera, a digital portable multimedia player, and so on.
Most IC cards or UICC are likely to support, in addition to a historical International Standard Organization (ISO) protocol (specified in ISO 7816 standards), a high speed protocol that is based on only one of MultiMediaCard (MMC), USB protocol for InterChip use (USBIC) and Universal Serial Bus (USB).
When the UICC or IC card is engaged with the SC writer/reader or the external device, which may have an IC card interface, and connected to a computer via a high speed protocol interface such as the USB standard, the UICC then configures itself with the USB protocol to communicate with the computer and provide a user with a low-cost, high-speed serial interface that can be easy to use and support a “plug and play” function to the devices external to the computer.
However, the conventional IC cards cannot be used in hosts or the external devices that do not adopt the same protocol mode. For example, the IC card operating in the MMC protocol mode cannot directly communicate with the personal computer when the computer does not have an interface and the communication protocol for the IC card including the MMC mode of a flash memory.
As the size of portable devices is getting smaller and thinner, it may be highly desirable to use a single IC card device that can operate in multiple protocol modes instead of utilizing an individual card for each different protocol mode or implementing an additional hardware to accommodate the operation of the terminal in the multi protocol modes.
Currently no implementation may be developed for the UICC to operate in both USB and MMC without multiplexing or implementing a heavy procedure in the mobile communications terminal. Moreover, any specific procedure to be implemented in the terminal (or PC) restricts the market to the only new terminals implementing the specific procedure.
The physical interface between UICC and mobile terminal is based on an eight contacts module. It is very much unlikely that more contacts can be implemented. Therefore, all extensions have to be considered based on: the existing contacts; a minimum backward compatibility: a session can be always opened on ISO T=0 protocol as defined in ISO 7816 series. In addition, the issue is that the number of electrical contacts available on the UICC or IC card is typically limited to eight. As the functions and capabilities of wireless communications devices continue to develop, increasing the total number of electrical contacts may be one way to support such developments.
However, adding new physical electrical contacts on the UICC can require the significant modifications for both UICC and any external device that needs to communicate with it.